


when I opened my eyes, you were what I wanted to see

by cashewdani



Category: One Direction (Band), Radio 1 RPF
Genre: F/M, Other, Threesome - F/M/M, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 16:01:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2474075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daisy decides the best way to ring in 30 is with a threesome. She didn't plan on getting pregnant. Especially with Nick's baby. A very vague <i>Threesome</i> AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when I opened my eyes, you were what I wanted to see

[ ](http://smg.photobucket.com/user/cashewdani/media/cashewdani022/tumblr_ndnfuf1hmV1qzhhjno1_500_zpsaeb6f0d7.jpg.html)

“I don’t want to be turning thirty. Turning thirty means you’re old,” Daisy complains and Nick rolls his eyes and just pours her more wine.

“Know your audience, love.”

She forces herself up from the pillow nest she’s made on his sofa because it seems like if she’s too pitiful, he’s not going to pass her her serving. “Please, you’re making thirty-four look so amazing I forget all the time you’ve even made it that far.”

“Better,” he says, thankfully handing her the glass of merlot, filled significantly higher than her first. And her second. She’s pretty sure her lips must be a color even Maybelline hasn’t discovered yet.

“Plus,” she takes a sip before continuing, settling back into the fluffy warmth of the couch. “You got to turn thirty in the summer! With Ibiza and the pool and the skimpy outfits! I’ve got to turn thirty in January. On a Sunday.”

“But you get to turn thirty with Harry,” Nick says with a smirk and a twirl of his hair.

She bites her tongue through a smile. “There is that.”

“When is our boy due home?”

“Not til Saturday. Early,” she says, swirling the wine in her glass. “And he has to leave by Sunday night again.” She’s sulking, she knows, but she was sulking before this topic came up, so it’s not like it matters all that much.

“Well, the economy of LA might collapse if he’s not there to collaborate with the Americans. Wouldn’t want that on your head.”

Daisy sighs. “I know it’s his job and he loves it and that he’ll be home eventually, but I just...miss him.”

She feels for a second like she might start to cry but then Nick’s tapping her on the chin, a buck up request, and making her show him the pictures again that Harry took while dressing himself up like David Bowie while he was alone in his house and that episode of _Flight of the Conchords_ was on HBO.

She’s laughing before she knows it, Nick once again asking aloud why he even had that much makeup around to being with.

Later, Daisy will kiss him goodbye at the door, his mouth warm and wine soaked, before she takes the short walk home. She’s got a pair of Harry’s gloves in the pocket of this coat, he’d given them to her at the airport when he’d flown off after Christmas.

She lets her hands freeze. She’s still twenty-nine. She’s allowed to be an idiot.

\---

Harry calls that they’ve landed, they’re in the car, and she can hear in his voice how he’s still half asleep. She pictures his eyes closed, his forehead leaning against the window. He says, “I’m sorry I woke you,” but she’s not.

It’s still dark out as she re-braids her hair and brushes her teeth. Puts on a shade of lipstick that is definitely too rich for almost four in the morning. The smell of heat starts filling up the house after she’s fiddled with the thermostat even though she keeps feeling the need to rub her hands together. She’s anxious. In all honesty, she’s anxious. But in that Christmas Eve, night before a holiday, her mostly long distance boyfriend is coming home for her birthday kind of way.

Monty won’t stop whimpering, not entirely sure why they’re up and about at this hour, and Daisy has to keep trying not to step on him. He’s completely underfoot as she pads around in the thick socks that barely skim her knees, filling the kettle out of habit before she remembers what time it is. 

But then Harry’s opening the front door and Monty’s barking and moving faster than she’s seen him go in ages. Daisy watches Harry down there at the end of the long hallway, a smaller bag than she’d like to see over his shoulder, bending down to scratch Monty behind the ears. If he’s not quicker with it, the poor dog is going to wake up all of Primrose Hill.

“Shhh, there we go. There’s a good boy,” he whispers before glancing up and seeing her in the kitchen. She bites her lip, tasting the Tom Ford version of cherry.

And then he’s standing, striding the distance between them, all long legs and purpose, the bag forgotten along the way. Daisy anticipates the chilly way his leather jacket is going to feel pressing up against her before he’s cleared the alcove. She shivers as soon as their bodies interlock, her bare legs chafing against the denim of his jeans and she can’t stop kissing him even though his mouth reminds her of a piece of spearmint he’s been chewing on for hours.

The kettle clatters to the floor and it makes Monty start barking again. Daisy just laughs and kisses Harry harder.

Her lipstick is going to be all over his face when they pull apart. 

She never wants to pull apart.

He balls up the fabric of her jumper, his jumper actually, and his fingers are so cold as they brush against her back. “You shouldn’t have given me your gloves,” she says, when they’ve both come up for air and he’s just holding her like he’s forgotten it’s something he’s allowed to do.

“You should have gotten on the plane with me,” is what he says before he’s kissing her again, up against the counter. The edge is digging into her spine, hard enough to leave a mark, until he picks her up, simply, easily, to put her up besides the hob. Slides between her legs and she’s missed this.

He just rocks against her for awhile, mouthing against her throat like he’s moments away from falling asleep, and even that is sending her heart rate through the roof. “God, I want to fuck you,” she announces towards the ceiling, back already arching, very aware of how long it’s been since they’ve even just been naked in the same time zone.

“Yeah,” he murmurs against her skin, his lips moving slowly before he yawns. “I’m sorry,” he says, barely before another one grabs him. “I wanted this to be better but I’m so knackered.”

She tells him, “Let’s go to bed then,” while running her fingers through his hair. Watching his heavy lids try to keep his eyelashes off his cheeks. “Let’s just lay down together, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he answers, and he sounds wrung out and sleepy and even that makes the desire in her gut twist tighter. "I love you," she thinks is what his slack mouth says before it's stretched around another massive inhale.

In the bedroom, he clings to her under their duvet, all arms and legs and needing to know she’s there and somehow she falls back to sleep but it takes until long after dawn.

\---

He was still asleep when her mother came round unannounced with just a little token of her affection and early happy returns of the day. But he’d woken up, stumbling into the sitting room thankfully wearing trackies and an ancient t-shirt, his hair still dripping down his neck from a shower, to greet her mother with the biggest kind of hug. He had them both laughing while slicing fruit for porridge, telling a story about running into Tyra Banks at yoga, bits of berries staining the tips of his fingers as he’d moved the slices around on the cutting board.

And then, not long after, he’d mostly been playing with the boys since Gwen and her dad had also apparently decided to celebrate ahead of time by bringing over dessert. Her reputation for being a wretch while hungover she’d had no idea was powerful enough to keep both of her parents away on her actual birthday.

But it’s nice to have them, even if Daisy’s ideas for Harry’s first hours home looked a little different. She likes the way Harry fits into her life. With her family and her friends, it’s like he’s always been there, but that’s kind of just how Harry is. He shows up and you wonder how you got along without him. 

Still though, it’s unsettling, how much she wants to devour him as he lets Apollo color in some of his tattoos with markers. 

It’s been weeks since she’s felt Harry inside her, stuck with it only being a thing to fantasize over while he jokes through e-mail about how maybe they should have made those One Direction dildos at their height of popularity. And yet somehow she doesn’t just fuck him in the middle of her living room in front of half her family.

Not even when her brother makes him push his shirt up to add green to the laurels on his hips and Harry has the nerve to look her straight in the eyes. Like a fucking trollop.

She flushes and cuts herself another slice of cake. Makes herself not look at the clock or kick everybody out.

\---

The club is hot and loud and Harry obviously got them VIP gold platinum diamond status or whatever it’s called and Nick booked the DJ and she keeps drinking whatever anyone puts in her hand.

She’s been drinking for hours now, actually, since Alexa arrived at the house with a bottle of top shelf vodka and four possible outfits, in the middle of yelling at Pixie over her mobile to get here ten minutes ago.

Daisy had felt sixteen again as they’d passed around mixed drinks poured with heavy hands, trading clothes and makeup tips, music playing at such a high volume things were rattling on her counters.

Harry and Nick had taken up residence on the bed, giggling over their own inside jokes, swiping any garments that made it close enough to them. It would have been nice if Harry had gone out wearing that patterned top of Alexa’s or that Nick didn’t look better in her leather pants than she does.

Not that Harry seems to think so, consistently brushing his fingers against the curve of her ass whenever the opportunity presents itself. When she’d asked him about it, he’d simply said, “I’ve missed being able to touch you”. And she had needed to grab him by the open part of his shirt, his chest warm and solid underneath, and kiss him right there.

She still doesn’t care how it had started a round of catcalling, everything was just the way that Harry’s mouth fit against hers even while he was grinning.

And despite how for years he’s been getting grief globally about what a terrible dancer he is, when her hips interlock with his, and their hands are allowed to roam and grope wherever they’d like, he’s amazing. She would dance with Harry forever. As long as there was a beat and his body, she’d never need to stop.

“I wish you weren’t famous,” she screams into his ear at a volume that she knows is still reaching him at barely a whisper. “Because I’d like you to fuck me right here without it getting leaked.”

He groans and grinds against her and she feels a bead of sweat snake down the whole length of her spine.

“Let’s tell them we’re going. Let’s go,” he says, his lips grazing her jaw as he pulls away. “I can’t wait any more.”

But somehow they wind up in a cab with Nick, and Sam, and Florence and the others in a car right behind them, everyone coming back round to hers, missing the way that Daisy can’t take her hand out of Harry’s pocket, even though it feels like the only thing that she herself can focus on.

\---

They don’t stay long though, Alexa suggesting going round to hers instead after she maybe intentionally broke a bottle of wine in the garden while having a cigarette. And amidst laughter and apologies they’d all filtered out, putting on coats and scarves and mittens, leaving butts in ashtrays and drinks strewn all through the flat.

Except for Nick. 

Nick, who is still here in the sitting room, watching the tonic bubbles in his glass. It’s really his fault and not hers that she says, “I want to have a threesome. If I’m turning the big three-oh in,” she checks her wrist where maybe at some other time she would have worn a watch, “some amount of time, I want to do that.”

Harry waggles his eyebrows at Nick, and he’s so drunk. They’re all so drunk. She’s not entirely sure she remembers taking the cab ride home, other than Harry’s hands on her thighs and Nick’s laugh crackling over all the rest of her skin.

And Harry’s been snogging her since they got in the door, undoing his shirt like they’re at a beach resort and given her at least two love bites that she can feel. 

Nick called her the most beautiful birthday trash bag but he's been watching like a slag.

“Are we sure now’s a good time for choosing to do something like that,” Nick asks, even though she saw the way his legs splayed a little further apart on the settee across from them. 

They can all end up in the rubbish bin together. 

“I don’t want to be old,” she huffs and Harry laps at her throat, like that will be comforting or erase the ravages of time. She wants to feel the way she did in her bedroom a few hours ago, just young and impulsive. She doesn’t want to think about whether now is the best time for decision making. “I want to be fun and do fun things and I want to fuck my boyfriend and our incredibly fit friend.”

She reaches for Nick’s hand, hoping he’ll take it, because Harry is already clearly on board. Daisy can feel how shallow his breathing has gone all along the curve of her shoulder.

And then Nick is getting up, adjusting himself, taking the three steps towards them on the sofa like he’s suddenly stone cold sober. Like there’s not an ounce of unsteadiness to him. “Only since it’s your special day,” he specifies, leaning over her.

“Only since she’s gorgeous,” Harry supplies instead, nibbling possessively on her pulse point after, and it’s then that Nick bends the rest of the way and kisses her, tasting of quinine and ice and just a little bit of a cigarette he must have snuck when she was in the toilets. 

She knows what kissing Nick feels like. The wide expanse of his hand against her face, her chin and cheek and ear all seemingly disappearing inside the spread of it. But she didn’t know that Harry would groan like that from watching.

That she would like that reaction so much.

She feels like fairy lights are flickering inside of her, all at different times.

Nick pulls back first, and she reaches after him a little, chasing the mouth that she’s been kissing for so many years now it’s a little bit like a sexual homecoming. 

But she’s never fucked Nick before. Never gone further than when they’d snog in a bed before passing out on one another. And the little sliver of her that’s clinging to sobriety gets scared because this is Nick. And her. And Harry. And it’s really fucking scary, because what if this changes everything after all these years. It definitely could.

But she still asks, “Would you two kiss for me?”

They both laugh, Nick’s high pitched and manic to Harry’s low chuckle, and it makes her flush as much as the two of them.

“You game, mate?” Harry asks.

Nick answers, “Thought I’d be the one asking you,” but his face looks confident and placid. Until Harry stands up to kiss him, and he goes boyish and a little undone. Just like that.

Daisy remembers it from parties and late nights and even sometimes afternoons in a garden if they were feeling particularly playful. The way too that they’d disappear and come back looking disheveled and hyper aware of one another, if they even bothered to come back at all. 

Harry had told her it meant nothing and it meant everything and somehow they understood that until it became too hard to think about.

And then that was when Harry was away a lot. Not like he’s away now, where he apologizes for every time he has to leave, but when they all kind of knew he needed to be somewhere else that he’d call home for awhile.

It barely seems real though, in this moment, as she sees Nick change the angle, the flash of his tongue before it’s swallowed by Harry’s mouth. They’re here in the same city and the same room and completely in one another’s space and she feels overheated thinking about how she’s orchestrating this moment. How much has changed. How they’re all getting older and maybe that’s good. Maybe that’s what makes all the good stuff happen.

She hasn’t told them to do anything more than snog, but Nick’s taking his own direction, rubbing Harry through his jeans, teasing him with those long fingers that he’s going to open the flies, but never following through. As Nick mouths at his jaw, Harry’s all parted red lips, head thrown back, tattoos straining over his skin. He is so beautiful. And she is so lucky.

Harry stutters out a sound after one apparently overly suggestive stroke on Nick’s part, his back curving up and Daisy wasn’t aware just how tightly she was biting into her own lip. She gasps too, with realization maybe, with something that just has to get out, and they stop to look at her.

She worries for a second that they’re going to have forgotten she’s there, but Harry gives her the biggest, slowest of smiles, and the anxiety dissipates even though her blood keeps thrumming.

“You’re the birthday girl,” Nick says, ragged, pupils blown out. “Seems unfair for you to be over there on the side.” 

It is, she realizes, drastically unfair that no one is touching her. And she’s wearing too many clothes and there’s a beautifully huge bed just a way aways, covered in down and softness. So she stands and kisses them each quickly, Harry first, followed by Nick, sandwiched between their grasps and bodies the whole time, before suggesting the bedroom.

On the walk there, Harry leads, the fingers of her left hand tucked into his waistband, while Nick has his grip encircling her right wrist. She feels connected and anticipatory and surreal, almost, because this wasn’t on the agenda.

When Harry turns on the bedside lamp, his bedside lamp, the one with the shade that just always is a little crooked following the time he’d attempted a cartwheel and knocked the nightstand over, she fully expects to wake up and for this entire scene to have dissipated.

But there’s Harry, with his hair curling around his ears and Nick toying with the cuff of his Louis Vuitton dress shirt, before tugging the whole thing off, and this is real. This is happening.

Harry has gone pink all over and Nick keeps trying to swoop his tired quiff against gravity and it reminds her of ages ago, when they were babies. Maybe most closely that first time the three of them had been together in one place, when Nick had insistently suggested she get up and dance, unaware that Harry had been skating his fingers under the hem of her skirt beneath the table and she didn’t think she could stand even if she tried.

Her legs go similarly jellied again, anticipating, and she has to lean against the dresser for support. She’s even more thankful for that choice when Harry notices and looks at her wolfishly, like she’s a thing to be devoured and savored.

“Get on the bed,” he says, and it’s almost a growl. She and Nick both follow the directions, not entirely sure which one of them is being spoken to, as Harry undoes his ponytail and sinks to his knees.

He works at loosening all the laces on her boots that hours ago he’d watched her do up, her bum in the air, wiggling in his face like she knew exactly what she was playing at. He’s moving agonizingly slowly and maybe this is her penance. 

Nick takes the opportunity to wetly ask into the shell of her ear, “You alright?” and she says that she is, even though she can’t fight off a shiver as one of Harry’s thumbs brushes along her thigh.

“Maybe lay back, love,” he suggests, and she lets his touch guide her onto the duvet. Move some of the damp hair off her face. It’s comforting amongst all the rest of the overstimulus. “You sure you want to do this? I can go,” Nick says in almost a whisper, like it’s a little secret they’re sharing over Harry’s head.

She reassures him, “Don’t you dare,” and he places a kiss on her forehead right as Harry gets her boots loose enough to slip off. She feels his touch skate over her calf and the arch of her foot, coaxing goosebumps up on one leg and then the other.

Haphazardly, he presses his lips against her skin, leaving her no way to predict where his mouth will make contact with her next. It’s sloppy and heating her up as he splays her legs further and further apart. And she knows she’s mewling and thrashing a little, but it’s been so long . Too many weeks of mental foreplay.

Except that’s actually Harry’s tongue teasing above her tibia. It’s his breath breaking behind her knees. And she’s so jittery with what’s to come, the impending crescendo of all this build up, that it’s a frankly far too obvious metaphor.

After a particularly intense nip, his teeth dragging in a way she’s probably going to be able to see tomorrow, Harry finally pushes her dress up, shoves her knickers aside and licks a forceful line across her. It makes her cry out and actually shift further back onto the bed, her nerve endings unprepared for such a focussed assault.

He stills immediately, “You okay?” and she bites her lip again and nods, not trusting her voice, just desperately needing him to finish what he started.

Harry goes to lift her feet from where they’re suspended over the edge of the bed and Nick shifts and helps him reposition her against himself so there’s room for all of them off the floor. Nick is pulling down the zipper on her dress and Harry is creeping her thong over the rise of her arse and she just wants to be as naked as her emotions feel right now.

Nick kisses her deeply for a moment, like he did in the living room, and undoes her bralette with much more competence than she would have thought him capable of and then Harry’s laying down between her legs. The expanse of Nick’s chest is really the only thing that’s keeping her from jolting away again, that’s keeping her pinned against Harry’s mouth as her body tries to process the stimulus. A moan creeps out of her, sinful and filthy, and she reaches a hand up, finding Nick’s hair and pulling before she even knows that she’s doing it.

He hisses and arches up against her backside, his erection filling out in his trousers, and it leaves her panting. Feeling powerful. Harry doesn’t falter against her, even though she can see how much he’s grinding himself into the mattress. She’s not the only one who’s waited.

If she thought she could put the sentence together, she’d suggest a 69 or jumping right for the final act, but it feels like there’s no air coming into her lungs. Nothing but the rapid pulse of her heartbeat directly under Harry’s tongue.

She threads her fingers through Harry’s hair next, the texture softer and with less product than Nick’s, trying to get him to use more pressure, and then feels Nick’s grip interlock over her own. He presses, the bones of their hands slotting together, and Harry exhales a moan, hot and damp, against her.

It’s the first time his momentum stutters, but once Nick’s fingertips pinch at Harry’s earlobe and tell him, “Show her how much you’ve thought about this”, it’s all over. Daisy knows that’s the sound Harry makes right before he comes, and she watches his hips writhe in his jeans against the blankets.

He lifts his head, gasping, and she refuses to focus on the sheen he’s got on his face. She’s sopping and on edge even without it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, then “Fuck!” smacking at Nick’s leg. “What are you doing?!”

“I didn’t know you were still such a hairline trigger, popstar,” he says, trying to use his free hand to brush off the way Daisy is digging her nails into the flesh at the back of his neck. “Ow, stop, I didn’t mean to. Figured you’d matured out of it by this point, honestly.”

“I’m drunk!” Harry yells as an excuse, cheeks flushing angrily. “I’m not going to be able to get it up again forever. You’ve got to fuck her now.”

“What? You can’t be serious.”

“It’s her birthday, Nick!” and Daisy has to stroke at his hair, Harry looks so pitiful.

She reassures, “It’s okay, babe,” because it seems silly to get mad at her age about a stunted sexual romp.

“No, he’s going to do it.”

“Harry,” she needles, because Nick doesn’t have to, obviously.

“He’s right,” Nick says, pushing her up, so she can turn around to see him. “You deserve this. Just tell me what to do.”

She laughs. She doesn’t mean to, but it’s just hilarious to think about incredibly gay lothario Nick Grimshaw agreeing to fuck her and needing explicit instructions. “Sweetheart, no, it’s good. We’re good.” Daisy goes to finish the job herself, somewhat hoping that Harry’s up close perspective might revive him, but Nick grabs for her wrist, stronger than someone as thin as him has any right to be.

“If we’re going to do this threesome thing, we’re going to do it right, okay, Daize? Nothing half arsed.” They lock eyes and she realizes some part of him wants this. The point further driven home as he adjusts his position and she realizes he’s still hard.

Harry suggests, “Why don’t you get on top,” nudging at the side of her Nick isn’t slowly running his pointer finger down, and she guesses this is happening.

Harry’s the one who undoes Nick’s trousers and helps him wiggle them and his pants down past his ankles once she’s vacated the space. Stating, “I’m not going to be the only one still dressed,” before adding his own soiled outfit to the pile on the bedroom floor.

Daisy watches, idly biting on her own thumb to occupy her hands because she wants to just touch everything. Have everything touch her.

But then at last she’s not the only one who’s naked, and the two of them are laying out across her bed, Nick motioning for her and Harry’s gaze pulling her in.

“I’ll be gentle,” she assures and Nick laughs, stroking himself just a touch before opening the wrapper of a condom. She doesn’t expect Harry to reach for it, to roll it over Nick’s prick, for Nick’s eyes to drift closed as her boyfriend purposefully gets him ready for her.

“You need any slick?” he’s the one who asks, and she can’t help that the question makes her reach between her legs to check, before nodding yes.

She likes the way she can hear each of their inhales, the way Harry has to shake his head and mutter, “You’re too much.”

But he’s wrong, because it’s not her, it’s all of them and everything that’s too much. The snap of the lube’s cap opening, and the cool drizzle of it on her fingers before she spreads it on the head of Nick’s cock, and the way that both of their colognes smell mixing together in the room.

“Sure you want to do this, Grimmy?” she asks, but like every other point tonight where they could have stopped instead of going ahead, he doesn’t turn her down. “And you’re alright with it, Haz?”

“I love you,” is all that he says, and she has to kiss him, once more, tasting herself there on his lips, before straddling Nick’s lap. His mouth widens as she gets comfortable, and he feels different than Harry, but still very much all that she needs right now. It’s not going to take long, she knows, as she starts to set a rhythm that’s already escalating the sparks Harry started setting off inside her.

She hopes Nick doesn’t mind, but as soon as the thought passes through, Harry leans his mouth closer to Nick’s, and then Nick’s kissing him like he loves him. She wonders if he can taste her too. If that’s a part of it. How some piece of her wants it to be.

It’s probably after midnight, she’s probably already thirty, but she feels young and alive in this confusing and messy moment. And when Harry’s fingers find her clit, push strongly with purpose, she comes, weeks of tension bursting from her with a shout. Nick mutters out a curse, following her, surprisingly, and Harry just sighs, happy.

She lays down across Nick’s chest, collapses really, not wanting to move, and Harry strokes her hair, looking at her like she’s something precious. “Happy birthday, Daisy,” Nick says, kissing her forehead, and she could fall asleep every night, just like this.

\---

They wake up like so many mornings she can remember, all tangled together with hangovers just starting to come to the surface.

She needs a coffee and a shower and for Nick to stop elbowing her in the ribcage, but probably not in that exact order. Daisy shoves at him and he grunts, barely stirring. Harry however is already blinking at her, all big green eyes, murmuring, “Happy Birthday” in a voice that sounds completely wrecked. He kisses at her hairline as she says good morning, already thinking about how he has a flight out today. But, he’s smiling when he pulls away, propping up on his elbow to say, “Up and at ‘em, Grimshaw, we’ve got to get the kettle on.”

“You’re so loud, how are you always this loud?” Nick complains, but while thankfully shifting his arm away from Daisy’s spine.

Harry laughs, his hair hanging into his face. “Like you should talk.”

“Some of us are trying to figure out if we still qualify as gay, Styles. It’s too early for this.”

Daisy runs her fingers over Nick’s chest, making a clucking sound that she hopes he finds comforting. He doesn’t open his eyes.

“I’m going for a wee,” Harry says, “but when I’m done, she’s getting brekkie in bed.”

Swatting at his naked bum on his way to the bathroom, Nick suggests, “Lovely, make some for me too, Haz. Cheers,” and Daisy listens to his laugh until it winds up muffled behind the closed door.

“I think he’s still drunk,” she says, trying to shift into a position that’s comfortable. “He has to be.”

“He’s a baby. Oh God, what are we going to do when he turns thirty,” Nick asks and she can’t help but look at him a little bit spooked.

\---

Harry had insisted on making cinnamon buns because it is her birthday and there’s no way she’s having a grapefruit or flax seeds to celebrate. Watching him tear her kitchen apart, pulling down bowls and containers, getting batter on everything, he talks to her about practicing out in LA to do them gluten free and vegan, just for her.

And he’s so cute in that Aerosmith t-shirt with the holes at the neck and his little black pants, his hair pulled out of his eyes with the headband she keeps in her bathroom for when she’s doing a mask. She just watches him. Drinks her coffee, sweet and light, and pets a sleepy Monty on her lap.

Nick has gone home to vomit in his own toilet if the mood strikes, but Daisy feels pretty good, all things considered. The caffeine, a hot shower and the smell of sugar have left her calm and settled.

When he puts the pan in the oven, going on and on about how he knows they’re going to taste like the real thing, she’s never going to notice a difference, she gets down on her knees and blows him.

He comes before the timer goes off.

\---

They both take the cab together to the airport and she’s happy that Harry has so many notes in his wallet because the driver definitely needs a tip for ignoring both their snogging and how Daisy cried the whole way home.

\---

She hasn’t seen Harry for almost a month, having had to do a book signing on Valentine’s Day and a snowstorm canceling her own birthday celebration fly out plans. In fact, the weather has been downright god awful since he’s left, so it’s not all that surprising that she’s been feeling kind of worn out and shaky. She keeps waiting for the fever or the snot to get her, but it just seems to be hovering instead of getting worse.

Still though, when she’s canceled on Nick for the second time in a week because she’s feeling too poorly to brave the cold, he refuses to hear of it.

“This is why you should pay for the special Sky package too!” he says, letting himself in and knocking a pile of dirty slush off his boots in the entryway. “So you could get _Better Call Saul_ and we wouldn’t have to always go to mine.”

“You could have watched it yourself at home.” She is wrapped in the blanket that Gemma gave her at New Years and her head feels like it could possibly break through concrete. “I think I’m honestly going to fall asleep talking to you.”

He tuts over her, placing his ice cold hands against her skin and commenting on how she feels warm, as though there’s any other option with how chilly his fingers are. “You’re sure you don’t have a fever?”

Daisy gestures at the thermometer on the coffee table. “36.8, below normal even.”

“Still, you look really peaked, Lowe. We’ve got to get some vitamins into you. Maybe that citrus thing Fiona is always going on about.”

“I’ll be okay,” she says, angling her body so that he can slip in between her and the arm of the sofa. “I’m not even that poorly.”

He settles in, letting her take all the time she needs to reposition herself in a way that feels the closest to comfortable she’s going to get. “Yeah, but after Christmas? Worried about you a little bit, honestly.”

Because Daisy had spent the Christmas holidays getting pneumonia and all the associated x-rays and pills and misery. It’s not been her favorite winter. “I just need to sleep it off. Get a little sun hopefully one of these days.”

“I think you need to see a doctor. Because you fought it the last time and ended up in hospy.”

She rolls her eyes. “I ended up in A&E, it’s a different thing entirely.”

“Still. Need you better. Can’t keep watching your subpar telly programming. And you never have any good snacks.”

“Oh, fuck off, Grimshaw,” she says, closing her eyes and letting him flip aimlessly through the meager selection of channels she gets. “Who’s coming on the show tomorrow?”

“Chris Evans off the Marvel movies,” he states, like that’s not the biggest of deals.

“And you don’t want to be at yours doing sit-ups until everything burns?” She smiles as she says it, because it’s a joke, he’s somehow getting more and more fit with every passing year.

“You know, I could take offense to that if I had the mind to.” 

“Not worried about anything though? Waking up with a spot? Getting sweat stains on your high end v-neck?”

He runs his fingers through her hair and he’s being so gentle even though she’s teasing him. “I’ll just nick some of your sanitary napkins and tuck them inside my jumper to deal with the flop sweat. You’ve got extra, right?”

“I need those,” she whines. “And, they’re expensive.”

“Please, your boyfriend is a bajillionaire. Unless you need them tomorrow, you should let me have them. Are you on the rag?” he asks. “Maybe that’s why you’re feeling so poorly. Aimee would suggest eating a burger.”

“Stop talking about things you know nothing about,” she chastises him, rubbing her cheek against the scratchy screen printing of Beyonce from two tours ago on his t-shirt, trying to get as comfortable as she was a second ago.

“Do you think you might fancy a burger anyway?”

“Do _you_ want a burger, Grim? Before Captain America is in the studio?” she pokes at his ribs, trying to make it a joke, but distracted by the fact that she doesn’t know for sure when she was in fact last on the rag. “Thought you’d already had mung beans and air for your tea.”

“You’re a menace, Lowe. Can’t believe this is how I’m repaid for keeping your poorly self company.”

She nods, groggy, not wanting to ask what the date is as he raises the volume on the telly.

\---

Nick had had to practically carry her to bed last night before the panel show with someone from Manchester United trying to sing opera had even ended. And she’d slept, apparently out before he’d even latched the door because she doesn’t remember hearing him locking up, right until she woke to that same rolling feeling in her stomach she’s been feeling for days now.

It’s sitting on the floor next to the toilet that she checks the date on her phone. Double checks it against the calendar.

And promptly dry heaves over her own reflection in the bowl.

\---

Daisy decides between trying to eat a rice cake and laying on her bathroom floor again that there is really no good solution here.

If she goes out to buy a test, it’s very likely that pictures will be taken and sold off. Her presence online has only gotten worse since she and Harry were spotted holding hands on Primrose Hill two summers ago. Same goes for popping into a clinic.

If she orders it in next day from Boots, well, she’s still going to have to wait until next day.

And if she sends someone else, they’re going to know about it before Harry. And well, before Grimmy too.

Because no matter how much Daisy tries to convince herself there’s another alternative, there really isn’t. She and Harry haven’t fucked the proper baby making way since her bloodwork came up negative in December. Which means if she is pregnant, that it’s Nick’s. And that everything is about to get so much more complicated.

And after running through it all in her head, over and over again, not seeing any solutions, just picturing a nightmare future where the entire world has found out she decided all she wanted to celebrate three decades on this earth was a menage a trois, she’s in a full blow panic about it. Which can’t be good for a baby. Which only makes everything feel that much worse.

She had eliminated calling Harry in tears about it from the list pretty early on, but here she is, listening to the tone of the signal trying to connect across the ocean and an entire continent. It’s the middle of the night there she realizes, right before he answers, not able to hold back the weird, shaky way she says his name once he does. “You’ve got to come home. You’ve got to.” She tries to breathe and stop crying, but it’s really very futile in this moment.

“What happened? Are you alright? Do you feel worse?” Daisy hears his own mirrored nervousness, can already picture him shooting up in bed and looking for where he’d last strewn his clothes. Because she never is like this, even when he’s so far away. Maybe it’s the hormones? Fuck. “Talk to me, what’s going on?”

“I’m not that sick or anything, or hurt. I’m okay. I just need you to come home. I don’t want to talk about it on the phone. I need you to come home. Can you come home?”

“Yeah, yeah, if you need me to. But you can’t tell me anything?” His voice has gone calmer, slower, more like how he always sounds once he’s sure that no one is dead or on their way there.

She makes herself inhale in that same normal way. The way her lungs are supposed to work. “I just feel really alone and scared and like something super big is already happening.” It sounds stupid to say it out loud like that, this simple thing with none of the details attached, like she’d a little kid in a dark room before the first day of primary or summat.

Harry coughs then, like he’s swallowed wrong even though she hasn’t heard him drinking anything. “Did you talk to Nick?” he asks, a little bit choked and it makes her pulse continue beating fast and erratically.

“Why?” she asks, on edge like he’s putting two and two together without any information.

“Nothing. He rang after he left yours yesterday is all. But, let me go. I’ll make the calls, I’ll tell you when I get a flight. You’re sure you’re okay? Want me to get someone to come sit with you before I get there?”

It’ll be half a day until she can see him, conceivably, even if he’s already on his way to LAX. She’d rather wait than have someone watching her like a hawk just because Harry asked them to.

“No, it’s fine. It’s fine, I’m alright, just a little mental. Get here when you can. Love you.”

“Love you too,” he says. “And call again, anytime you want. I’ll make sure they’ll get me a plane with Wi-Fi.”

“Fancy popstar,” she chides, and maybe it will be okay. Maybe she’s not even pregnant. Maybe Harry won’t hate her at the end of it. Maybe she won’t have to tell Nick she’s already thought about whether she wants to keep his kid. “Go, so you can get here.”

“You’re alright, Daize,” he assures. “I’ll text the flight times when I get them. Love you, again. Love you so fucking much.”

She manages to say goodbye, wetly, because there’s no way that wasn’t going to set her off again.

\---

The three boxes of pregnancy tests she’d ordered from the local chemist once she’d remembered they existed get delivered by bicycle right to her front door like she’s not living in the fancy kind of future where she can pick to only buy the kind that tell you whether you’re pregnant in words instead of crazy arrangement of lines.

And they sit there in their little non-descript bag on the kitchen table as she drinks glass after glass of water and yet finds an excuse every time she goes to the toilet not to take them with her.

The telly plays in the background, nonsense programming she doesn’t pay attention to.

Walking Morty three times just to get out of the house, she can’t wait to see the headlines about how maybe now that she’s thirty, she’s really out to pasture, having just thrown a winter coat of Harry’s over her pajamas.

Nick texts her so many times throughout the day. About how Chris Evans is even more fit in person, and how his lunch of some really boring goat’s milk youghurt is not hitting the spot, and how he’s even starting to get a little worried that she’s apparently still sleeping since she’d never ignore his texts, but Daisy doesn’t respond to a single one of them.

Harry’s only eight hours away. Six. A mere handful.

Outside, the sun set ages ago, but then, finally, finally, he’s standing right in front of her.

\---

Unfortunately, she can’t rush into his arms and hug him and smell all the comforting pheromones he traps in cologne and hair product and the same articles of clothing he’s owned since she first met him. Because she’s hovering over the edge of her toilet, trying to wee only on the stick and not her own hand, which is hard with how much her arms are shaking.

A boring white pair of knickers tangled in her pajamas and piss on fucking everything she watches him take the scene in and wants to cry again even though she’s done it so many times today.

“Is this why you wanted me to come home?” he asks, so quiet she can only understand him because of the context.

She nods, the rest of her frozen in this stupid squat.

He questions next, “Did you cheat on me,” and she never wants to hear Harry’s voice like that again.

“It’s Nick’s,” she quickly says. “If it’s anything, it’s Nick’s.”

“Does he know?”

Daisy shakes her head at this. “Figured I’d wait until there was maybe something to tell.”

She puts the test down on the edge of the sink, adjusts her clothes and washes her hands while he drops his bag down next to the radiator, collapsing right beside it not long afterwards. “How long until we know?”

“Three minutes,” she tells him while scrolling to that exact number on her timer app. “How was the flight?”

“Fine.” It’s the first thing he’s said that wasn’t a question.

“I’m happy you’re here.” Daisy joins him on the floor and lets herself be pulled against him. His chest warm and just a little bit stuttery against her cheek.

Harry starts telling her, “I thought Nick might have let it slip,” in his Harry way where she’s not entirely sure what he’s talking about in the beginning. “Since I told him where I was when he rang. Worried about you and everything. But I knew Nick wouldn’t say anything and that you wouldn’t sound that upset even if he did. I’ve never heard you that upset. About anything. But I guess this a thing to freak out about if you’re going to freak out about anything. I hope this isn’t.”

He reaches into his bag then, pulling out a box, and she knows exactly what kind of things come in boxes like that. “Harry, no. Not now. No.”

He just moves it around in his hand, his fingers brushing over the velvet as he continues to talk as if she hasn’t turned him down. “I was going to ask you. I decided while I was writing that song I told you about, the one for Lorde, and I couldn’t get it out of my head and I swore the next time we were together I was going to ask. And this doesn’t change anything.”

“This kind of changes everything. Potentially. It potentially changes everything.”

“Do you love me any less?” he asks.

“No,” she states, quickly and honestly.

“Well, it’s possible I might love you more. Because I kind of feel like I’m always loving you a little bit more. So before you even look at what’s sitting on the counter over there, I want to know, Miss Daisy Rebecca Lowe, if you would want to marry me.”

“I’m being proposed to by a toilet! While my pregnancy test for another man’s baby waits to reveal the results right over there! This is lunacy! I know Jerry Springer is no longer on the air, but maybe he needs to have a comeback special just for this moment.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Harry says, with that Harry smile like he gets exactly how adorable he’s making you think he is right there on his face.

“I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

“Believe it. I mean, I was thinking Paris or a beach or maybe even just a restaurant, but the sentiment is the same no matter where we are. No matter what life throws at us. I want to marry you. I want you to say yes.”

She does. Eventually. Before she looks at the test that says yes too. And then she says it again, after, since that feels important to do.

\---

They call Nick, once she stops crying and once Harry puts the ring on her and kisses all the traces of the tears off her cheekbones and her lips and the curve of her eyelashes.

He brings a bottle of champagne he promptly drops in her front hallway once Harry blurts out he’s going to be a dad.

\---

“And you’re sure then, that it’s mine?” Nick asks, holding the breakfast glass of gin Harry had poured for him.

“Not a doubt in my mind.”

They’re all sitting in the living room, the arrangement only shifted slightly from the night of conception with her and Nick on the sofa together and Harry just across the way.

“Sorry ‘bout that, mate,” Nick directs at Harry, before wincing after a swallow. “But we used a condom. I distinctly remember using a condom even if I don’t remember much else.”

Daisy says the thing she’s always been afraid of since she first lost her virginity. “They don’t always work.”

“How do you straight people do this constantly? This is a nightmare.” He keeps twisting his hair, and she wants to just take his hand and make him stop doing it.

“Do you not want it then? If the test was accurate, is that what you’re saying?" She has no idea how she’s speaking so calmly.

“I don’t know, do I even get a say in that? I thought that was up to you, Daisy.”

“Remember when we went to that shower, ages ago, the one we got really bloody stinking drunk after and pretended we were pirates and like posted all those pictures online of the cookies we tried to make?”

“I remember that, but whose shower was it?”

“No idea. Beth’s? Was it Beth’s?” She shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter, anyway, do you remember what came after we were silly pissed and kind of just sad pissed? Where I said I’d give you a baby if you really wanted a baby?”

“Don’t talk about this,” Nick says while Harry states, “You never told me about that. Either of you.”

“It was before the two of you, Harold,” Nick assures him, kind of bitterly. Like it’s sad he’s still asking the same thing of her. “Which tells you how young and ridiculous we were.”

And he’s tugging on his grown out fringe again, so she reaches for his hand. “I meant it, Nick, honestly I would have done it then. And I’ll do it now.”

“I also vaguely remember telling you the nation would really miss looking at your beautiful naked body and I couldn’t have that on my head.”

“She’ll always be beautiful,” Harry says with a shrug and she can’t look at him, or her engagement ring or anywhere but the plant in the corner for a few moments.

“What the fuck are we going to do about this though, Daize? And Hazza, what about you? Like, you’ve got to see how mental this whole thing is.”

“Life is mental,” he states.

“Yeah, guess it bloody is,” Nick says, finishing off his glass.

\---

There’s the confirmation doctor’s appointment after, and Harry rearranging his schedule in California, and meeting after meeting after meeting. They each have to organize a timeline for statements and come clean about so many things she never wanted to talk about in a conference room, and she leaves every one of them feeling nauseous which isn’t just the morning sickness.

The story they’re going with, which is the closest thing to the truth they felt comfortable with, is that Daisy had agreed to be a surrogate for Nick and implantation eventually took. She and Harry are still a couple and actually had discussed getting engaged before this process was started. Their wedding date remains to be unannounced. The baby is due in October, no mention yet on the gender, and barring being forced to otherwise, Daisy will not divulge her pregnancy until at least early May. It’s all decided and signed off on and much more official and organized than any of the events that led up to it.

They tell their parents over one of the more awkward brunches she’s ever been to, where each of the mothers cry against the collar of her jumper, and Nick throws an outlandish maybe too big party at Shoreditch House to tell their friends.

The Daily Mail runs the engagement story on the front page after someone spots her ring only the third time she’s out of the house wearing it and there are still people outside both of their homes with cameras weeks later.

She’s heard the baby’s heartbeat and watched Nick make room on his crowded fridge for the sonogram picture that kind of just looks to her like a grainy black and white shot of over easy eggs.

And even with all of that, none of it really feels real to Daisy. She keeps waiting for it to sink in.

\---

Harry managed to stay for three and a half weeks before he really couldn’t put flying west off any longer. There’s deadlines and contracts and she gets it. They had all sorts of plans mapped out before she decided on a whim they should all sleep together just because she was getting older.

“You’ll call me if anything happens, right?” he asks, folding the last of the clothes she’d washed for him the night before even though he’d yelled at her like carrying a handful of trousers and shirts was going to send her into miscarriage.

“Anything?” she teases, because she’s going to be fine with this, the way she’s going to be fine with all of it. “Like if I want chips at tea or that stupid advertisement with the dogs is on?”

“You know what I mean.”

“The doctor says everything is fine. And I feel mostly alright, especially if I nap.”

“I don’t like that you’re still getting sick.”

“It’s not like I’m poorly, it’s meant to happen. And I’m barely ill. It’s my own fault for trying juice with breakfast, and before you say it, yes, I got another bottle of the mummy vitamins with the extra folic acid, I saw you looking it up on your phone in bed last night.”

“It’s almost like I love you or something.” He kisses the top of her head and then she tips her neck back to kiss him properly.

“Yeah, funny that.”

“It’s only a few more weeks,” he says, squeezing at her shoulder, and she knows. It’s not very many days at all. But when he comes back, she’ll be different. Bigger, and probably crankier and tired and suffering from any number of terrible ailments the books Fiona loaned her suggested.

She answers, “And I’ll be with Nick,” since between the two of them they’d decided she can’t possibly be left alone without a dad-to-be mother henning about.

“And you’ll Skype me every day.”

“Yeah, if I’m not too busy,” she smirks, and he shoves at her arm gently. “Watch it, precious cargo on board.”

“Now it’s precious cargo. When you wanted sushi last night it was worth risking.”

It’s her turn to shove at him then. “Pack your bags, you’ve got to go, you’re winding me up.”

“Alright, we’ll add teasing to the list of things you’ll get in the delivery room then.”

“With the sushi.”

He rolls his eyes at her. “Yes, obviously, with the sushi. You’ll never let me forget the sushi.”

“That’s your job while Nick cuts the cord. Opening my sushi tray.”

“Massive thanks for such an important role.” He kisses her again, before returning to arranging his suitcase, breaking their eye contact. “Do you think you’d want to do this again?”

“What? Fake like I’m helping you pack?”

“No, like...have a baby. You reckon you’d like to do it again? With me next time.” He glances down at her then, where she’s sitting cross legged on the bed.

“Of course. Of course I want to do this with you. I want to do everything with you.”

The way that he grins only verifies it further. “Good, I’m holding you to that. Even after you realize you’ll have to give up sushi again and change your mind.”

She throws a balled up set of pants directly at his face.

\---

“No, the light’s no good. What about over here?” Nick motions towards the area in front of her dresser. “Although I do rather like that new painting you hung in the front room...”

“Grim, I’m cold,” she complains, because her tunic has been discarded on the ottoman and she’s just standing here in her leggings and a bra she’s barely fitting into any more. “Can we just take the picture?”

“In a minute.” He goes back to shifting the lamp on her nightstand the barest of centimeters.

“Are we really going to do this every time you come over now?”

“You’ll thank me when you have these later.”

She tries to adjust the straps on her bra so she’s not just spilling out everywhere, but it doesn’t really work. “You just want to be like Tom Fletcher.”

“Oh, like Tom Fletcher is the only person to ever take pictures of someone being pregnant, Daisy, honestly. Alright, I think this will do. Now look like I’m not forcing you to do this.”

Daisy places one hand under the barest swell of her stomach, uses the other to try to make her top half look less centerfold and gazes down at her own bellybutton.

“It’s almost like you do this professionally or something,” Nick says, holding the image out for her to approve on the screen of his phone.

“Not for long,” she says, swiping through the rest of the album, already seeing the little changes in her figure from when he started doing these near daily photoshoots.

“Sorry,” he says, low, while she passes him back the phone and reaches for her top.

“None of that now. I’m happy.”

Nick tells her, “I’m happy too,” and she knows that he is. That he can’t wait to mention it on the radio and buy little rapper t-shirts and raise this tiny person that might honestly look like all the pictures his mother has up around her house.

She has the tears in her eyes before she can even try to stop them and he laughs. Not in a mean way, but just in a she’s already been set off this week by a cereal jingle and an old lady in the park kind of way. 

“What are you thinking about now, Lowe?”

“You taking this baby to a DJ set and they’re wearing little headphones so they don’t go deaf and you’re just so proud to have them.”

“Well, I think you’ve just predicted the future,” he says, his voice almost as choked as hers, and for a second she’s grateful Harry isn’t here, since he’d be crying more than both of them.

“This is really going to happen, isn’t it?” she asks him. “Like, we’re going to be someone’s parents.” Because she’s been trying to make it make sense in her head, how the three of them ended up here. How they’re going to raise a baby really soon. 

The bump is helping. Harry’s almost hourly texts asking how she and the bundle are doing. All the doctor appointments she suddenly has on her calendar. But still, it’s just the most bizarre thing.

“Someone’s awesome parents.”

“How could I forget that piece?”

“See, that’s why you need me around, for the reminding.”

She pets at his hair. “I need you around for everything.”

“So what you’re saying is that I’m staying tonight again, aren’t I?”

Daisy smirks. “You know, I’ve got a shirt you could borrow.”

“Ha ha, it’s only been five years, that’s never gets old. Honestly though, I’m wearing that Burberry one Harry got last spring and if it never makes its way back to this flat, well, isn’t that extremely strange, I definitely had nothing to do with that.”

“Just make sure the cams aren’t on tomorrow. He watches.”

“Good looking out.”

\---

“You’re sure you don’t want me to wait for you to get back? I can,” Daisy speaks into her mobile while taking in her reflection in the full length mirror. She thinks she can see she put on weight, but she’s not sure if that’s just because she’s specifically staring right at all the areas which have gotten bigger.

“No, no,” Nick assures her on the other end of the line. “Matt’s definitely had that look about him today that the meeting’s going to go long. Just tell Hazza I send my love.”

“With hugs and kisses?”

He states, “Obviously. And rainbows and unicorns as well. You’re sure you’re good to go alone?”

“I have a car, Grimmy, it’ll be fine.”

“Did you take your vitamins today yet? I moved them out in front of the tea when I left this morning so you’d see them...”

“Goodbye, Nicholas. Say hello to everyone.”

“Bye!” he draws out into her ear, thankfully getting the message that he was becoming annoying.

In the time before the driver shows, she puts on two different shirts and three jackets, and ends up going out in her first choice any way.

The paparazzi out on the street don’t yell and ask when she’s due, so, it was probably a safe choice.

\---

The carpark smells way more of exhaust than she would have expected, and no matter how much she tries to breathe only through her mouth, the fumes have gotten her dizzy and sick. She can add it to the list of salmon and the air freshener Nick’s cleaner uses as smells that suddenly make her gag.

Pregnancy is truly a miracle.

She texts Harry, _I wanted to meet you with a sign but I’m puking in a Tesco bag in the car. xxx_

_I’ll stop at the ATM for the driver. Think 100 will cover it?_

After another heave, she types out, _I’d make it at least 2._

\---

“You feeling better?” he asks, motioning towards the empty glass on the nightstand. “You want another water?”

“Nah, I’m alright. I’m just mostly happy you’re home.”

“Speaking of home, Nick and I might have been talking,” Harry says.

“Oh, this is never good,” Daisy answers, digging through Harry’s carry-on for the crisps he apparently brought back for her. She has never wanted crisps more than she has the past few days. Her child is possibly going to be born looking like a potato at this point. 

He begins, “You can say no,” before she interrupts.

“Of course I can say no.”

“Right, yes, but we were just wondering if it might make sense to start talking about getting a place.”

“How many places do we need between us exactly? We already have too many places, which, is your fault more than anyone else’s.” Seriously, where could he have possibly hidden a bag of honey BBQ crisps?

“No, like, one place. One place for all of us.”

She stops her search, nails digging into what is probably one of those travel sized bottles of sunscreen from what it feels like. “When did the two of you even find time to chit chat about all of this behind my back?”

“It wasn’t behind your back, it was just...you were probably sleeping. You sleep a lot now, Daisy.”

“Because I’m pregnant!”

He scrubs at his face. “This conversation is really not going how I wanted it to.”

“Oh, is this not how you planned it? You tired from flying halfway around the world, me being annoyed and not having the crisps I wanted?”

“Is that what you’re looking for? They’re in the suitcase. I got you two of the big bags since they don’t sell them here.”

“You did?” and she doesn’t want to be on the verge of tears about snacks. She is going to murder Nick tonight for doing this to her.

“Yeah, course.”

“Well, thank you. For that.” She feels guilty now.

“Should I let you eat some of them before we continue talking about this, or...” he trails his voice off and she hates him almost as much as Nick.

That does not stop her from opening his suitcase though. “Tell me why you and Nick think this will be a good idea.”

“Because he was here almost every night while I was away anyway. And because I know that we swore we weren’t going to talk about the tour until it was closer, but I’m going to have to go on the tour. Plus any tours that come after. And like this baby is going to belong to him too, and he’s going to want to spend time with it and you are as well, and just, I don’t know, it seems to make sense.”

“Can you imagine how that’s going to look though?”

“So you wouldn’t do something that was best for you, and me, and Nick, and this baby because of how it might look?”

She’s hurt by the accusation even though that’s what she was saying. Tries to deflect it by joking, “Thank you for saying that instead of the way you’re shoveling those crisps into your face doesn’t look like you care what anyone thinks.”

“But, no, really, Daize, would you want that? Even if people thought it was crazy?”

She licks the sweet/salty dust off her fingers and thinks about waking up that morning between the two of them. How the night before she’d consciously thought about always falling asleep that way.

Nick tickling baby feet while Harry sings in the kitchen over eggs and she’s in a fluffy robe that smells like all of them, her too, and it seems perfect. It seems exactly like what she would have picked.

“I think I want that very much. I’m going to call Nick and tell him to come over after work and to bring us all takeaway because we have a lot of real estate listings to go through.”

“Takeaway after the crisps?” Harry asks with a smirk, because, yes, she has texted him about nearly every pound she's put on, but he can unpack his own stuff if he thinks he’s so funny.

\---

Their weekends become traipsing through other people’s houses and judging their belongings and deciding whether they like the fixtures or where the bathrooms are or if the garden is big enough.

The press is having a field day with it, the fact that it’s the three of them especially. She can only imagine what it’s going to be like once the pregnancy news drops.

But she likes thinking of their pictures going up on the walls, none of which were taken from across the street with a telephoto lens, more than any of the rest of it.

They find a place on Rothwell Street that she thinks she’s gone to at least one party at over the years and which some designer friend of Harry’s assures them could easily be made two family without damaging the investment value at all.

And then Harry’s on the phone with one of his many financial advisers and they’re apparently all three homeowners not long after.

Identical keys on their key chains and everything. 

She takes the picture on her phone, of all of them on the coffee table at Nick’s, but keeps it just for herself.

\---

“I don’t think I want to do _Ok!_ ,” Daisy says as she wraps up the plates Nick pulled down from the cabinet. They’ll only let her help with moving if she can do it from the seated position.

Harry asks, “Really?” because she’d been the one most adamant about picking them, the seemingly least terrible option of all the terrible options.

“I think we should do this ourselves, you know? Nick, what do you think?”

“Well, what do you mean exactly?” They’ve both been carrying boxes around all day and Nick is flushed and just a little dusty up on a step stool in her kitchen.

“Do you think the big bosses would let us do it on air? A BBC Radio 1 exclusive?”

She knows that he tries not advertise himself or his life on air, at least not the big stuff. The mundane nonsense is fine and relatable, but the rest he tends to play close to the vest. Plus, there’s the whole thing about how Harry coming into the studio will be as much of a nightmare as it was when Nick first started. 

But she would just like the opportunity to maybe feel safe while this comes out.

“I could ask,” he says. “I think that might be good.”

“Yeah?” Daisy asks, her fingers dyed black with ink from the newspaper. “And Harry, you’d go? If Ben and Matt approve it?”

“Course I’d go. Fuck with his mic and everything.” His hair is fluffing out of the headscarf that she thinks was a shirt of Nick’s before Harry destroyed it.

“I’ll ask tomorrow,” Nick says, placing another stack of bowls on the table. She has no idea why she has a service for the army in her cupboards but they use the same six things over and over again.

“You like that idea? Huh, Baby G?” she asks to her stomach, dancing her fingers above her belly button because this shirt is already too dirty to bother caring about. “You want Daddy to talk about you on the radio?”

She hears what she thinks is one of her cookie sheets hitting the tiles and when she looks up, Nick’s staring at her really intensely.

Daisy asks, “What?” as Harry moves to rest his hand on Nick’s shoulder.

“So the baby’s calling me Daddy, then?” Because they haven’t discussed it. There’s so many things she never thought she’d have to discuss. That would just kind of sort themselves out.

“Course,” she tells him. “You’re the daddy.”

“And what’s this one over here?” he says jokingly, poking at Harry’s face.

“Well, I don’t know. What do you want the baby to call you, Hazza?”

Harry pauses, like he’s really thinking about it. “Poppa I think. I think I’d like the baby to call me that if it’s okay.”

“I think Baby G definitely approves of Poppa,” she says, kind of wishing this would be the first time she’d feel the baby move, just for emphasis.

\---

“So we have two very special guests in the studio today, which I’m sure you’ve probably heard about already because of the mob waiting outside the studio. Finchy, why don’t I get a mob like this outside every day?”

“Oh, let’s not start that now,” Matt says, placating him in a way that Daisy has heard over the airwaves for so many years. 

She squeezes Harry’s hand and he squeezes back.

“Well, yes, any way, we’ve got one of the most annoying people I’ve ever met. He used to come around these parts all the time but he got so busy with California and doing his job and dating a beautiful woman it feels like we haven’t seen him in ages. Nation, please give the warmest of Radio 1 Breakfast Show welcomes to Mr. Harry Styles!” They all cheer and clap in the studio, and it does honestly feel warm.

“Hiya, Grimmy!” Harry says and she forgets for a moment that it’s not 2012, hearing his voice speak those words.

“We’re so happy to have you today. Always so nice when you stop by, now, stop, wait, he’s already throwing little bits of paper at me. This is what I get for inviting you. You never behave.”

Harry leans back, pulling the mic along with him. “I’m behaving. Why don’t you introduce our other guest instead of being so rude?”

“Okay, you’re right. The other wonderful person we have here in the studio is definitely one of the loves of my life, just the most special of ladies. I am honored to have Daisy Lowe visiting us today also. Hi, Daize.”

“Hi, Nick,” she says, and they smile at one another across all the electronics.

“So, I hear that you two have gotten engaged, congratulations are in order.”

Harry laughs then. “Please, you know you were the first person to celebrate with us.”

“That’s right, Great Britain, I knew that Harry Styles had bought her this ring before anyone else.”

“Nope,” Harry disagrees. “That’s not right.”

She muffles a laugh as Nick slams his hand down on the desk. “What? Who else knew before me?”

“Um, my mum.”

“Oh, alright, well, that’s fine then. As long as it wasn’t some other friend of yours. Mums are fine.”

“My mum is rather fine, isn’t she?” Harry asks, waggling his eyebrows.

“Alright, that’s a little too saucy for this hour of the morning,” Nick says.

“A little bit nasty, honestly,” Ian jumps in, and it’s still his catchphrase. Still after all these years.

Fiona interrupts next, “Anne is a beautiful woman, though. I think we can all say that. She’s a good looking mum.”

“There’s a lot of good looking mums out there today.”

“Duchess of Cambridge,” Nick says. “Stunning. Completely stunning.”

“I quite like how Taylor Swift’s been looking,” Fiona adds. “With that haircut. Looks right perfect on her.”

And they all start speaking over one another, naming fashionable mums from Britain and abroad, kind of just becoming a buzz that’s probably really bad for the radio. She counts to five, slowly, and then says, “Daisy Lowe,” loudly, even though she’s right up against the microphone.

She’s sure her engagement ring must be practically cutting into Harry’s flesh at this point, but he doesn’t let go of her.

Everyone stops then, this dead static kind of air for just a moment before Nick asks, “Something you want to tell us, love?”

“Well, Daddy, I think you’ve known for awhile now.”

The way Nick grins at her sets a flutter off in her belly that’s not just the baby changing positions.

“Yes, you’ve heard it here first that your beloved host of the Breakfast Show is going to be a dad. All thanks to this amazing lady.”

Once again, the studio goes loud with celebration, background jingles playing and all the producers and personnel cheering.

“And her incredible fiancee,” Daisy says once it’s quieted a little, making sure to look at Harry, because this is about the three of them and always has to be. “Thanks to both of us.”

“Yes, of course, him too. One of the absolute best mates a guy could possible have.”

They talk about how the baby’s due early enough that he or she will need a Halloween costume, and how it feels weird to be talking about Halloween when it’s not even summer yet. The team all makes guesses as to whether it’s a boy or a girl on the way, and bring out an audio transcription of all the ridiculous names Nick has come up with for his future offspring over the years.

It’s wonderful, honestly, and she feels safe in this bubble of the studio, holding Harry’s hand and letting Nick have this moment she knows he’s waited for.

They take the Instagrim booth pics of the three of them, after the broadcast. Nick and Harry, each with a hand on her belly that she doesn’t have to disguise any more. Another where her hand is there too, her engagement ring catching the glare of the flash. One where they’re kissing her cheeks, and another where they’re almost out of the shot entirely because they’re on their knees and gazing at one another around the bump. They take two more, just to be safe she says, but because she wants to have a version where she’s kissing each of them.

Nick puts them all up, captioning, _What? It’s what a da’s supposed to do_ and the vibrations from her mobile almost immediately start going crazy in her bag.

Daisy finally takes a moment to look at the messages while they’re cutting up the cake they brought in from her favorite bakery and it just feels for a second like there’s too much love in her life. If something like that would even be possible.

\---

That night, while Harry is out at the gym and she and Nick are sitting in the dilapidated remains of his living room, it’s the first time anyone but her feels the baby move.

“Here, right here. I think it’s a foot,” she says, moving his hand above where this baby has forever destroyed her tattoo.

“I don’t feel anything.”

“Wait, just give it a second. There, did you feel that?”

When she looks up at Nick, it’s really obvious that he has. “You weren’t just taking the piss that Harry’s never been around when this happened, right? I can take it.”

“No. I’m starting to think the two of you had nothing to do with this at all because this baby seems very shy.”

“Yeah, that does not sound like Grimshaw DNA at all.”

He keeps his hand pressed on her, even though their infant seems to have retreated once she drew attention to it.

\---

Once the word is out, Daisy feels like time speeds up exponentially. She’s registering for shower gifts and taking campaign photos for Isabella Oliver, and buying enough cocoa butter that there is a bottle of it in almost every room she walks into.

They move into the new house, construction completed on their two separate entrances and the garden entirely revamped, and she only cries for a whole day about leaving the place she became this grown up, swollen lady in.

She feels like the numbers on the scale are rising with every degree of the thermometer too, which means the only thing getting lower is her patience.

“I think I should be able to go on tour with you,” she says, angrily chopping at the carrots Nick picked up at the farmer’s market in the kitchen she still hasn’t fully memorized the layout of. It took her over ten minutes yesterday to find a cake pan and she almost threw it out the window once she located it. “Perrie is going on tour with you.”

“That’s because somehow Perrie is not actually pregnant right now. It’s frankly a miracle.” He is looking at something on his laptop and she doesn’t even care to ask what it is.

“They have doctors in other countries in Europe, you know.”

His voice doesn’t even change even though they’ve had this argument basically every day since his suitcases came out of storage. “Yes, love, but they don’t want you going into labor on the plane.”

“Women used to give birth in fields, Harry! A private plane is way better than a field.”

“And a lot of places are way better than private planes.” Which is much easier to listen to than the last time she mentioned the history of midwifery and he told her the reason women in developed nations stopped doing that was because the infant mortality rate was so high otherwise. “You know I’d love to have you there, but this makes sense.”

“I know,” she says, trying to take comfort in how the knife sounds connecting with the cutting board. “And if I’m going to be a mom, I have to do things that make sense.”

“Well, not all the time.” 

He starts running his hand over her ass, reaching out from his chair, and she says, “Yeah, like cutting their fiance’s fingers off.”

“Point taken.”

\---

While Harry’s gone, Nick has scheduled so many things. Dinner with all varieties of their friends, filling as many nights and weekend afternoons as possible, and seeing Drake at the O2, and one of those special ultrasound appointments where your baby will actually kind of look like a baby.

She’s not entirely sure how it works any differently than the one her doctor has at his office, because so far the procedure seems very much the same. Drink enough water that you’ll realize you have to wee before you’re even halfway through the container. Pull up your shirt to reveal just how freakishly stretched out and alien your torso looks now. Have someone squirt too cold jelly on your stomach and then jam a plastic fist through it.

But this is the first time she’s let someone else come with her, and it’s nice to have Nick there, really. And not just because he’s someone to talk to who isn’t the technician.

“You excited?” she asks him.

“Yeah. This feels like a proper dad moment.”

She squeezes his hand. “Good, I’m glad.”

The quick sound of the baby’s heartbeat fills up the room, like the weirdest almost feathery bassline, and looking at Nick she can kind of remember what it was like to hear it for the first time. “That’s its heart, right?”

“Yes,” the tech assures him. “Perfectly normal rhythm. Good work, mummy. And if I just...one moment. There we go. There they are.” She angles the screen and yep, there they are.

“Holy shit,” Nick breathes out, and Daisy can’t really blame him. The baby is sucking its thumb, which she’d heard babies do before they’re born, but which it seems so crazy to actually witness. They look calm, this little boy or girl to be, she can’t really see what’s between its legs, but she does know it has eyelashes and hair and the absolutely littlest fingernails.

The tech assures them, “I’ll print copies and give you the DVD to take home and share,” but she might as well be speaking to herself.

\---

She of course sent the pictures to Harry, and their parents, and all the respective siblings and nieces and nephews and the close friends before she posted her favorite on Instagram.

 _Already blase about being on camera #babygrim_ is the caption she’s chosen. It makes it to the front page in less than an hour.

\---

Harry comes home early.

She knows, because she has had the date circled on her calendar from before she was even pregnant. Harry is due home from this European Reunion Tour on Sunday, August 4th, the day before she’s supposed to apparently go and eat icing out a tube and see if she dies.

But, unless she’s slept through the past two days, it is not yet Sunday, August the 4th. But there Harry is, just sitting at the kitchen table she’d let him pick out but that she doesn’t really like, when she comes home drenched in sweat from antenatal yoga.

“It’s not Sunday,” is what she says, trying to figure out if this is one of those high blood pressure induced strokes she’s been having more panic attacks about lately.

“I couldn’t wait until Sunday,” is what he says back, and yeah, she really couldn’t either.

\---

“Shhhhh, you’re going to wake Nick,” she whispers as Harry comes down the stairs like he’s actually part dinosaur.

“His bedroom is on the other side of the house, it’s fine,” he assures her, but Daisy really doesn’t want to get caught going to go fuck around. They haven’t talked about whether it’s okay to be naked in the common spaces, but, she imagines it’s probably not. “Plus, you’re the one who just has to have some ice cream.”

“Oh God, I do need ice cream.” And she still has knickers on, so this is probably fine.

There’s an unopened tub of vegan raspberry ripple in there. And she is going to get it as close to empty as she possibly can without vomiting. It is so much her goal that she doesn’t even think to grab spoons, she is just literally dipping her fingers into the cold dessert and moaning as she feeds it to herself.

“Hazza, this is so fucking good,” she says, and she knows it’s already dripping down her hand towards her elbow and onto her breasts. “So incredibly fucking good.”

And then he’s kissing her, his tongue so much warmer than the ice cream. “Delicious,” he comments, the pink of the fruit just visible on his chin in the moonlight when he pulls away. She realizes her own is sticky.

He scoops another double fingerful out to feed to her and she sucks so strongly on his skin that she can feel her cheeks hollowing out. He groans and it makes her hungrier.

The kitchen’s warm, and the ice cream is melting faster than she would have expected it to, but Harry is catching every little bit that escapes either of their mouths initially.

“You are so beautiful,” he says, bending down in front of the mound of her belly. “I knew you were going to be bigger when I came back, but I had no idea just how amazing you were going to look.” The sheer awe in his voice is the only reason she’s letting him talk about how much larger she’s grown while he’s been away. He runs his fingers across her skin, the wide expanse of her, before pressing his mouth to yet another wayward splatter of raspberry coconut milk.

Daisy moans and no longer really cares if Grimmy hears.

\---

“I am so happy you told me I had to do this today,” Daisy says to Alexa as some poor woman tries to take the swollen stumps at the end of her legs and make them look like a lady’s human foot.

“It was my pleasure, I needed a new shade for Ibiza anyway.”

Daisy presses the intensity on the massage chair higher while saying, “I’m so jealous you’re going.”

“Next year.” Alexa can sound so blase because she’s going to be on a boat in 48 hours and not waking up with the worst heartburn she’s ever felt.

“Please, with the pram and the crib and the thousand nappy bags.”

“Well, you’ll have two dads to carry the stuff. It’s actually a perfect scenario you’ve worked out here.”

“Oh yeah, because that was the plan. Two dads to carry the stuff.”

“Just accept the perks, Daisy.” 

She closes her eyes and takes the advice.

\---

She goes home still wearing the rolled up toilet paper between her toes because she didn’t think of having Alexa take it out for her before she got dropped off.

And what’s strange when she walks in is that there’s nothing on. No telly or music or shower running. And she thinks for a second that maybe they’re out and she’s going to be stuck with separated toes indefinitely, but then she hears Harry whining, “Heeeeey,” from further in the house.

She follows the sound until she is forced to stop at the doorway of the room they’ve been talking about setting up for the baby. Because the two of them are standing there, paint in their hair and on 3/4’s of the walls, and a nice handprint of Nick’s on Harry’s arse.

“What are you doing?” she asks, quietly, even though it’s very obvious.

“Shit,” Nick says, clearly feeling caught. “Alexa was supposed to ring when you were coming home.” He pulls his mobile out of his pocket. “Oh, looks like she did.”

“Surprise,” Harry meekly responds. “We’re doing the nursery. Do you like it?”

It honestly looks like kind of a mess, and she’s not sure she would have picked this particular shade of green, but she still has tears in her eyes. “This is so lovely. But, I thought we were getting someone to do this?”

“Well, we were until my dad called and asked if I was really so posh now that I couldn’t put together my own crib or paint my own walls.” Nick tells her.

“You’re going to put the crib together?”

“No, god no. I don’t want my child to die the first night we take them home.”

Which, fair.

“It’s really lovely, honestly. This is going to be perfect.”

“Wait til you see the giraffe I bought, here, hold on,” Harry presses a paint roller into her hand, sliding past for some other part of their house where apparently a safari animal has been waiting.

\---

The plan for Nick’s birthday was a garden party at Collette’s, something small and tasteful and mostly dry, since Daisy might have gotten mad one too many times that everyone else can drink while she can’t.

What happens instead is that he sits with her in a hospital room for hours while she’s connected to a bunch of machines because she spiked a fever and that’s apparently very not good.

They send her home with something for a UTI, tell her to have loads of cranberry juice, and she will never be able to apologize to Nick enough for having to endure this experience.

“Don’t worry, I’ll just remind the kid of it all the time. ‘I never do anything for you? I sat with your mum in hospy _on my birthday_ because _you_ crushed her bladder so much she got an infection. Go to your room. You ain’t going to Glastonbury this year.’”

Daisy thinks she means to laugh, but the sound that comes out of her sounds not much like that at all.

\---

“Fiona, if he’s on the air, don’t tell him obviously, but I’m pretty sure I’m in labor,” Daisy says to the producer’s voicemail. “I’m going to ring for a car but it might be nothing.” Because she’s three weeks early still, and has been getting the kind of contractions for days now they told her to just drink more water for, but something feels different. “Harry’s in a meeting with his manager across town, but I’m ringing him next. Have him call me,” she closes with, pressing end and then taking a couple of moments to really grasp at the back of a chair.

“Fuck,” she says after that wave of tightness has passed, because while she has weeed herself more than she ever thought she would sober as an adult these past few months, this is also something different.

“Fiona, so, change of plans. My water’s broken. Maybe he should come. After the next link, maybe he should come.”

\---

She asks the driver to put on Radio 1 and she can still hear Nick’s voice, talking about how sometimes he just wants to have to go back to school as an excuse to buy new pens. And it’s soothing, hearing him like everything is normal.

They make it to hospital before he starts another song, before Fiona probably has a chance to listen to her messages and definitely before they’ll call in Fearne or Scott or anyone standing in the hallway to fill the last few hours of the broadcast.

There’s time. There’s plenty of time.

\---

It wasn’t an understatement. Harry and Nick both arrived within ten minutes of each other before she’d even had a chance to get put into a gown. And then they all waited the next twenty-six hours for something to happen.

\---

“We have to give her a name,” Daisy says, watching Nick holding her, their new little girl with the dark hair and hazel eyes.

“You hated all my suggestions.”

Harry tells him, “Baby is really a terrible name for anyone outside of _Dirty Dancing_ , you have to realize that.”

“Yeah, we should save that for a dog.”

Daisy is so tired and sore, but she refuses to fall asleep until her daughter has a name. “What about Molly?”

“Molly Grimshaw,” he says, testing it out with a smile, as the baby waves her little hands around. “I like that. Hazza, you like that?”

“Think it’s lovely.”

“Good,” Daisy says as part of a yawn, before she drifts off entirely, or realizes she’s just decided to name her child after a club drug.

\---

Twelve days later, she’s rocking Molly Elizabeth in the chair Jack saw at some auction and bought for them.

The sun just came up, she saw it out the window as Molly latched on and finally quieted, and there’s a special kind of peace in this house and this room and this person that Daisy is. She knows Nick will be getting ready for work and that Harry will rouse himself to give her a break and that the dogs will definitely want to go out, but for right now, there’s just the creak of the chair against the floorboards.

“I can’t wait to turn thirty-one with you,” she whispers to her baby. “With our whole crazy family.”

\---

_Epilogue_

“Happy Birthday, Poppa!” Molly crows from the doorway and Daisy tries not to laugh at the way Harry groans next to her in bed before putting on a smile.

“Is that my girl? Well of course it’s a happy birthday now!” He motions towards himself and she launches herself on top of them.

“Daddy said it was late enough to come in now.”

Harry mutters, “Of course he did,” as Daisy kisses Molly’s head and makes room for her between the two of them.

“Have you been good for Daddy this morning?” she asks, adjusting the blankets so they’re all wrapped up together.

“We made bacon sandwiches. And vegetable milk,” which is what she’s taken to calling the smoothies all of her parents gag down in the morning. “And a surprise.” She whispers that last part.

“A surprise!” Harry nearly shrieks. “Is it for me?”

Molly giggles then, all Nick’s ability to just spill happiness out over an entire room. “Poppa, it’s a surprise, you don’t get to know.”

“Oh, I’m going to figure it out,” he assures her, fingers starting to tickle her little chubby midsection. “I think you’re going to tell me.”

“No!” she howls through her laughter, tiny tendrils of hair coming loose from her pigtails. “Poppa, don’t ruin it.”

“Okay, alright, I won’t. Go make sure Daddy doesn’t need any more help setting up.”

She reminds them, “Don’t come down until I tell you to!” launching herself from the bed and barely missing the door jam as she heads for the stairs.

“So what do you think it is? A card with a big three and zero on it? Or one of those crazy art projects I’ll have to try to figure out without having her explain it to me?”

“I might have had a little something to do with it.”

“Well, now you have to tell me.”

She reaches for her dressing gown, teasing him. “But look how excited she is! How could I spoil it?”

“Give me a hint.”

“Nope, you’re just going to have to wait and see.”

On the table, once they’ve been given permission to leave the bedroom, is a tiny box that Molly had helped with the wrapping of, so it is covered in literally every bow that had come into this house at Christmas. Nick is standing by the island, drinking his coffee, and smiling sleepily at Harry while Daisy goes and leans against him.

“Molly, you want to help me open it?” he asks, and she immediately scrambles into his lap from her own seat at the table.

“I’ll do it careful.”

“Yes, carefully, please, my darling. Thank you.”

“Of course, Poppa.” Once she sets all the decorations to the side of his breakfast plate, she says, “Now close your eyes. This is going to be so special. No peeking.”

Harry obediently covers his face with his hands as Daisy helps her get the tape separated from the lid.

“Okay, Poppa, you can look now,” she says, bouncing with such force on this thigh that Daisy’s worried she’s going to hit the edge of the table.

Inside there’s a tiny, pink, inside-out t-shirt. “Oh, it’s lovely, but I think I’m much too big for it. Did you pick it out?”

“Mummy did. Here, look at the inside, that’s the best part.” She struggles with turning it the right way before Harry comes in to help. “I know what it says! Do you know what it says?”

“I’m the big sister,” he reads out quietly, glancing over at Nick and Daisy. “Is this real?”

“It is very real,” Daisy says. “Confirmed at hospital and everything.”

Molly tells him, “Oh, Poppa, don’t cry. Mummy said she’s going to love all of us the same.”

He kisses the top of her head and then swings her up onto his hip so he can kiss Nick, and Daisy and the dogs, and Daisy’s sure that he’s going for that stray cat in the garden if she doesn’t stop him. “Happy Birthday, Harry,” Daisy whispers against his neck. “Think this might top even my thirtieth.”

“No, yours will forever be my favorite birthday," he says. "There is nothing about this I would change. Not a single thing.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't watched Comedy Central's _Threesome_ , I'd highly recommend it. Googling for it is a little tough though, I'll admit.


End file.
